Google this week added Hindi to the languages spoken by its "Allo" digital assistance service, the company's Siri-and-Cortana competitor.
The Register fancies this is a pretty significant thing to have done, because the world has about 400 million Hindi speakers in India alone, with plenty concentrated in states like Bihar …

Vid
Microsoft has entered the virtual reality race, announcing a new headset called Evo in collaboration with Intel.
The headset will have the same advanced features of current high-end products including the Oculus Rift, HTC Vive and soon-to-be-launched Sulon Q, but will work with mid-range laptops, the company said.
Up to now, …

The NHS is still running Windows XP en masse, two and a half years after Microsoft stopped delivering bug fixes and security updates.
Nearly all of England NHS trusts – 90 per cent – continue to rely on PCs installed with Microsoft’s 15-year-old desktop operating system.
Just over half are still unsure as to when they will …

Microsoft says buying LinkedIn will help to address the middle class discontent that saw Britain vote to leave the European Union and America vote to leave politics as we know it behind by electing Donald Trump.
The company has expressed that sentiment in its post announcing the European Commission's approval of its …

Here's something fun for Christmas: the folks behind the free and open-source hosted QEMU hypervisor have whipped up an online advent calendar that offers you a new virtual machine to download every day between now and Christmas.
The 2016 QEMU Advent Calendar kicked off last week with a download of the 56kb MikeOS, apparently …

November lies behind us in all Reg-reading jurisdictions, so it's time to again consider the state of the desktop by gazing at the three services we use to assess desktop operating system market share.
Those three – StatCounter, Netmarketshare and analytics.gov, each assess OS share by looking at web traffic. The first two …

On November 30, simultaneous raids in five countries by the FBI, Europol, and the UK's National Crime Agency (NCA) finally shuttered the Avalanche criminal network that has been spewing malware and money laundering campaigns for the past seven years.
The Avalanche network was a system of 600 servers around the world that were …

Updated
Mozilla is scrambling to patch a vulnerability in Firefox that is apparently being exploited in the wild to unmask Tor Browser users.
Earlier today, a small package of SVG, JavaScript and x86 code popped up on a Tor mailing list that, when opened by Firefox or Tor Browser on a Windows PC, phones home to a remote server and …

Carleton University in Ontario, Canada, has confirmed it has been hit by a ransomware infection that crippled some of the Windows machines on its main campus.
Systems at the university started to go down on Tuesday, and its IT department reported that email, network drives and the central university student portal had all …

Microsoft has released an early version of Node-ChakraCore for macOS, following a similar release for Linux at Node Summit in July.
Why is this important? Well, Node-ChakraCore is Microsoft's open-source glue that plugs Node.js into ChakraCore, the MIT-licensed JavaScript engine within its Edge web browser.
It's all part of …

Global spending on Ethernet cables will soon cross the $1bn threshold, say analysts.
A forecast report from Allied Market Research projects that by 2022, businesses will be shelling out more than a billion dollars annually on copper and fiber cables to transmit data and power.
The figures include the spend on fiber and copper …

More than 4,000 Brits have had their computers infected with ransomware this year, with over £4.5m paid out to cyber criminals, according to Action Fraud.
Ransomware is a type of malware that encrypts files of infected PCs before demanding an extortionate payment for the encryption key needed to recover data. The malware …

Updated
Hard-drive-scrambling ransomware infected hundreds of computers at San Francisco's public transit agency on Friday and demanded 100 bitcoins to unlock data, The Register has learned.
Ticket machines were shut down and passengers were allowed to ride the Muni light-rail system for free on Saturday – a busy post-Thanksgiving …

Dell's applied for the US trademarks “Canvas” and “Dell Canvas”, both covering “Interactive touch screen computer interfaces”.
So what's it up to? The Register reckons the most obvious candidate is something to do with its Surface Hub competitor, the model C7017T 70-inch Interactive Conference Room Monitor, as that's the most …

Black Friday and the Cyber Monday that follows have become big discount shopping days for consumers, but enterprise vendors are getting in on the act too with hefty discounts on training and some kit.
Cisco Press is running a Buy 2+, Save 55% or Buy 1, Save 35% sale until November 26th, so the CCNP Routing and Switching v2.0 …

Microsoft plans to emulate x86 instructions on ARM chips, throwing a compatibility lifeline to future Windows tablets and phones.
The Cobalt project should bear fruit within the year, when the "Redstone 3" release of Windows 10 is due to arrive, Mary Jo Foley reports. Ideally, Microsoft wants everyone to convert their old …

Office Depot has suspended PC Health Check – its malware-scanning service – after it was accused of lying about infections to push antivirus software.
Former Office Depot technician Shane Barnett told Seattle TV station KIRO 7 that the PC Health Check service would lie to customers that their otherwise-clean PCs were infected …

Analysis Wikibon's chief technology guy, David Floyer, has put out his top six disruptive tech tips for 2017, seeing that ARM and Open CAPI will separately grow at Intel's Xeon expense, the cloud at on-premises' Server SAN expense, and flash at disk drive's expense, while XPoint will be a 2017 dud.
Here's his list:
AWS will …

Exclusive
The global IT team at Hewlett Packard Enterprise that company execs previously praised for managing the smooth break-up of the organization is finally being rewarded – the entire department is being, er, outsourced.
The destination for these techies is the CSC and HPE Enterprise Services borg – the businesses are coming …

Japanese tech godzilla Fujitsu has insisted it is not exiting the PC market despite being in talks with Chinese rival Lenovo to offload its devices unit.
Speaking at the Fujitsu Forum trade fair event in Munich, head honcho for Fujitsu in Europe, Middle East and India Duncan Tait said: "We are very clearly in the PC business" …

A low-end notebook drought is likely coming to a town near you, multiple analysts and tech distributors have told The Reg.
NAND flash is one component that has been in short supply in recent months, and glass panel manufacturers are shifting priority to higher margin areas including TVs, sources told us.
Tim Coulling, senior …

2016 will forever be remembered for the Brexit vote, the Donald's presidential victory and maybe, just maybe, the year that Acer's bottom line recovery started in earnest. OK, the last one is a long shot.
The Taiwanese notebook business has reported calendar Q3 results, and while the top line continued to slide on the prior …

Register Roundtable
Sometimes technology visions bubble along under the radar, quite often scorned then, following a change of name or emphasis, ubiquitous. Utility computing became the cloud, and we know how that’s taken off. Groupware became collaboration. Thin clients have morphed into VDI, and… Well, seems like a good time to get a bunch of …

That took a while: Android's had Hover since Ice Cream, but boffins have taken until now to work out how to attack it.
Hover is a set of interface calls that let application designers imitate mouse-over behaviours people know from PCs, and it only needs to be implemented on a phone or tablet to be vulnerable - whether or not a …

Microsoft will begin public trials of a new update system it says will dramatically reduce the size of Windows updates.
The Unified Update Platform (UUP) will be available to Windows Insider users with the Windows 10 14959 build, and will eventually be offered to all supported versions of Windows on PCs, tablets, phones, …

Brits are getting better at patching Windows on their personal computers but worse at updating their applications, according to a new study.
Stats from vulnerability management outfit Secunia Research reveal that 6.4 per cent of UK users had unpatched Windows operating systems in Q3 of 2016, up from 5.4 per cent in Q2 but down …

Is HP’s ambitious 3-in-one phablet replacement for PCs for you? Probably not for most of you, you may gather, but it does make for a fascinating proposition, and obvious sense for some workers wrestling with cumbersome old kit.
HP explained to us how this week – with more details of how much all this will cost.
The idea is to …

Comment
Yes, I know the new Surface kit unveiled by Microsoft (hands-on and roundup) is both lavishly over-engineered and ludicrously expensive. You know that. We all know that.
But that's not the point. The Surface extravaganza is a good thing. Faced with a mortal threat, Microsoft is doing something it should have done years ago – …

Fujitsu is in talks with Lenovo to offload its PC arm to its Chinese rival.
If the talks are successful, Fujitsu will continue to sell and support own-brand PCs, designed and made by Lenovo.
The two companies are looking to the Development Bank of Japan to bankroll the deal.
Fujitsu is currently the 10th biggest PC …

Adobe is advising folks to update Flash Player – as malware is right now exploiting a newly discovered hole in the internet's screen door to hijack Windows PCs.
The emergency patch addresses a single vulnerability, CVE-2016-7855. The use-after-free() programming blunder allows an attacker to achieve remote code execution when …

Microsoft is warning of fake copies of its Security Essentials that if executed will throw a fake blue screen of death, pwn machines, and lead users to technical support scams.
Redmond regards the threat dubbed Hicurdismos as a severe threat which compromises PCs typically through bundled software installers and drive-by- …

Security researchers have demonstrated how to gain root privileges from a normal Android app without relying on any software bug.
The unprivileged application is able to gain full administrative permissions by exploiting the Rowhammer vulnerability present in modern RAM chips. Essentially, malicious code can change the content …

Last Friday's Mirai botnet attack against Dyn must force everybody's hands – vendors, regulators, and Internet infrastructure operators.
It's going to be a while before research gets as far as attribution to an attacker, but in the meantime, there's plenty of culpability to go around.
Two things are clear, however: the …

Updated
Today a vast army of hijacked internet-connected devices – from security cameras and video recorders to home routers – turned on their owners and broke a big chunk of the web.
Compromised machines, following orders from as-yet unknown masterminds, threw massive amounts of junk traffic at servers operated by US-based Dyn, which …

On Tuesday, Intel said it expects to bank in the final quarter of the year $15.7bn in sales, plus or minus $500m. That's a billion-dollar swing.
Two days later, on Thursday, AMD proudly revealed that its entire revenue for the three months to September 24 was $1.3bn. Just over a billion dollars. AMD is little more than …

Microsoft's first-quarter results for its 2017 fiscal year reveal a four per cent year-on-year fall in profit and 10 per cent dive in operating income.
Just before the quarterly results were announced, Microsoft's stock was down about half a per cent to $57.25 a share. Then when the figures landed, and despite the fall in …

An EU High Court Advocate General has recommended a review of the case that saw Intel slapped with a record fine after it was found to have coerced OEMs to avoid using rival companies' x86 CPUs.
Back in 2009, the EC imposed a €1.06bn penalty - 4.15 per cent of Intel's turnover - following a multi-year legal battle but …

HP Inc - not wanting to be entirely out done by the other half of the business that it split from - is to toss up to another 4,000 workers onto the employment bonfire, and the ailing PC and printer market is to blame.
Confirmation of the “approved restructuring plan” was outlined last night in an SEC filing, it will be …

Last month’s Mr Chow ransomware attacks serve as a timely reminder that security should be at the top of any business IT strategy. Ransomware is on the increase, at least according to the FBI and while it is not all email borne, it is an example of how sophisticated hackers and criminals are getting with technology.
Certainly …

WD has produced Blue and Green branded SATA SSDs, based on SanDisk technology, with these brands having been used for WD disk drives previously.
The Green brand is for secondary storage, being reliable, cool and eco-friendly whilst Blue products are built for PC primary storage use. Other WD brand colours include Black for …

New data from analyst outfits IDC and Gartner suggest the PC market continues to crater.
The latter firm's 3Q2016 data records an eighth consecutive quarter of shipment decreases, to 68.9 million units or a 5.7 per cent decline from the third quarter of 2015. IDC found “nearly 68 million units in the third quarter of 2016 ( …

Interview
At Microsoft's recent Ignite event in Atlanta, The Reg sat down with Brad Anderson, Corporate Vice President of Enterprise Client and Mobility.
Brad Anderson is a Microsoft veteran who oversees how Windows and mobile devices are managed in business. A decade ago it was simple: firewall-protected network, Windows PCs, and …

Canalys Channels Forum 2016
There isn’t much mystery in PCs these days - and not much margin either - but that could all be about to change if HP Inc’s prophecy on the bewildering range of payment options for device services proves right.
The firm rolled out out a “from birth to burial” device-as-a-service package for customers in the summer and it is …

Fujitsu has become the latest sub-scale PC maker to consider exiting the client market amid ongoing talks with potential buyers including Lenovo.
The Japanese giant reacted to a report in the Nikkei Asian Review this morning that put Lenovo, the world’s biggest shifter of PC tin, as the leading candidate to gobble the business …

Google today announced new phones, VR kit and home gadgetry. But it didn't announce a tablet. And nobody cared.
We've known for ages that tablet sales are declining. The most recent tablet sales data we've covered has the market at about 150m units a year. Apple has a quarter of the market and Samsung has about 15 per cent. …

Canalys Channels Forum 2016
The world’s largest cloud players are in danger of becoming too big to fail, the boss of Canalys warned today.
This is a problem because the list of potential trip hazards for the likes of Azure, AWS and Google is growing ever longer – and at least one of them is going to stumble and fall, taking customers' off-premises …